Keri-Lynn Wilson is one half of one of opera’s great power couples. Her husband, Peter Gelb, is general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, in New York. The Canadian conductor is also music director of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, which she founded – she is of Ukrainian heritage – in the wake of Russia’s invasion in 2022.
All of which means that Wilson, who makes her Irish National Opera debut this weekend, and her husband have had some very demanding schedules.
“He doesn’t sleep,” she says. “I need a little more sleep. I have tremendous respect for what he does, because his background is one of dealing with musicians. I mean, how he managed [the pianist Vladimir] Horowitz, how he toured the Boston Symphony, how he worked as a PR person. He had some experiences in his life that have definitely been hugely educational for me.”
Changing tone, she adds, “My husband is separate from his title. I’ve certainly, just by being around him, learned so much about musical management, about the psychological aspect of managing the challenges.
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“But on the other hand I couldn’t conduct at the Met for a long time. I had to prove myself in so many other places, so they finally wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, that’s nepotism.’
“So it’s been a bit of a hindrance. But I’ve always said there’s many places to work other than the Metropolitan Opera. I’m sure I was a victim of bias against my husband sometimes. But it’s okay: I don’t think about it. I’m a very positive person. I just jump off.”
Wilson, who’s coming to Dublin to conduct Irish National Opera’s Viva Verdi, Viva Wagner concert, doesn’t mention that they married in 2003, before Gelb got the job at the Met, that they married in Italy while she was conducting at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago or that she already had other opera work in her schedule.
Opera wasn’t where she began. “As a student at Juilliard,” she says,” I basically worked on symphonic repertoire. And once I graduated I became the associate conductor with the Dallas Symphony.”
Then she was offered Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in Verona. “I couldn’t even sing the arias from it. But of course I accepted it. I had six months to learn it and knew nothing about opera. I fell in love with opera, and we seemed to be a good match.
“Then I was asked to conduct a tour and performances throughout Italy, starting at Busseto, Verdi’s home town, with the composer’s Rigoletto. It was a Vittorio Sgarbi production. He was this notorious, controversial politician, but he was an art expert, so he had all sorts of ideas for settings on the Italian tour.”
If you want to put Irish politics in an interesting perspective, check out Sgarbi’s career and ask yourself which politician here would choose to direct an opera.
Wilson’s main instrument at Juilliard was the flute, though she did sign up to a Verdi course there even before she added conducting to her portfolio. Two of her five favourite operas are by Verdi, his Don Carlo and Otello. She’s delighted that two selections from Don Carlo feature in her Irish National Opera debut.
And Wagner? “I’m a huge Wagner fan. Unfortunately, because I am not the music director of an opera house, it’s challenging getting the titles when I’m guest conducting, because all the music directors want to do Wagner.”
It turns out she took a Wagner course at Juilliard, too, but her major exposure to the composer came through a family connection.
“It was because of my cousins who live in New York. When I first came to Juilliard they welcomed me; they embraced me. I was a kid from Winnipeg, and they had a house in Long Island and were very much like family. They bought season tickets to Wagner’s Ring in the Otto Schenk production at the Met and invited me. I was just 18.
“In my first year of conducting with Otto Werner Mueller at Juilliard I had a Bruno Walter scholarship the first summer to study in Europe in whatever capacity I wanted.
“So I reached out to Claudio Abbado” – then principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic – “who became my mentor. It was my dream to go to Bayreuth, so I asked Wolfgang, the head of the Bruno Walter scholarship foundation, ‘Can you please get me into Bayreuth?’
“All these places were verboten for young conductors. But Daniel Barenboim – he’s such a generous musician and gracious to young talent – he said, ‘Yes, I’ll let her come and watch my rehearsals in Bayreuth.’ The first rehearsal was act three of Walküre. It was just fantastic.”
Wilson has worked with only one of the three singers from her Dublin programme, the Norwegian baritone Yngve Soberg. “He did a Rigoletto with me in Oslo, in 2019, and he also performed arias with me with the NDR Radiophilharmonie, in Germany, which has a summer festival of gala concerts. It will be wonderful to to get back with him. I’ve never worked with the soprano, Sinéad Campbell Wallace, but I hear she’s wonderful.”
I ask about the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra. Is it one of those rare institutions that mightn’t have a purpose if its anti-war message is successful and Ukraine emerges intact from the war?
“You could assume that, but it’s become such a great orchestra. I’m of course biased, but I know what great orchestras sound like. It was initially created out of this horror. I wanted to create some sort of an orchestra of refugees. I didn’t know what. But it became a really great artistic symbol of what resilience is and how you can use art as a political tool.
“Besides that, when we do have victory, this orchestra will continue. Because it is a symbol of what extraordinary good can come out of evil. And it’s also because we’re now family. And once the borders open in Ukraine, it’s my goal for us to establish it there.
“This would, I’m sure, be everybody’s desire. Because it’s really a symbol of pride for the Ukrainians. It’s a superstar orchestra. It’s the best of the best of their talents. We have musicians from the Kyiv Symphony, the National Symphony, Kyiv Camerata, Lviv Opera, Lviv Philharmonic, Odesa Philharmonic, plus players who have left and are in established European orchestras now.
“The fact that we now have our recording on Deutsche Grammophon of Beethoven Nine – we’re a very proud group, and when we rehearse six hours a day for 10 days in a row, and they never complain, that’s an extraordinary group.
“I want us to continue and give that victory tour in Ukraine in every single city, from Kharkiv to Mariupol, and then continue very much like in the tradition of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, born of course of a conflict that is still ongoing. Because Ukraine is a small country – it’s always been part of those smaller nations around Russia – it has to have that symbol of strength and resilience. This orchestra will continue until the day.”
Beyond her passion for her Ukrainian orchestra, Wilson says that her “goal now is typically to be satisfied with repertoire. Right now I have choices. I can manage my schedule a little better. I’m only going to take this or that if it fits in my schedule. It’s a little more controlled now, whereas in the past it was jumping from one thing to the next.
“Artistic cohesion in the sense of repertoire is very important for me now. Life is short. I want to grow. I want to always get on the podium with all of my passion and never feel, like, mundane, if something is not 100 per cent inspirational for me to conduct.”
Keri-Lynn Wilson conducts Viva Verdi, Viva Wagner, with Sinéad Campbell Wallace, Ryan Capozzo, Yngve Soberg and the Irish National Opera Orchestra, in excerpts from Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, Il Trovatore, Macbeth and Don Carlo, and Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Götterdämmerung and Die Walküre, at the National Concert Hall, in Dublin, on Saturday, September 13th
